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Environmental Polling Roundup – August 26th, 2022

David Gold David Gold

HEADLINES

KEY TAKEAWAYS 

GOOD DATA POINTS TO HIGHLIGHT

FULL ROUNDUP

NBC News

Voters lean toward believing that the Inflation Reduction Act is a good idea, even though only about one-quarter believe they’ll personally benefit; partisans are becoming more polarized around federal climate action (Article, Topline)

NBC News finds that, while voters are supportive of the Inflation Reduction Act when they hear about it, many haven’t made up their minds about the bill and most people don’t see how it will personally benefit them.

After hearing a brief description of the bill (“Democrats in Congress recently passed legislation supported by President Biden that addresses health care and prescription drug prices, climate change, taxes for corporations, and the federal budget deficit”), voters are 11 points more likely to believe that it is a “good idea” (42%) than a “bad idea” (31%). Even after this description, however, roughly one-quarter of voters (26%) say they can’t give an opinion on it.

It’s also worth noting that, while the total level of support here is lower than we’ve seen in other polls, the fact that voters view the bill more positively than negatively by a double-digit margin even when it’s directly attributed to one party (Democrats in Congress and President Biden) is an encouraging sign about the bill’s popularity. 

Voters’ support for Biden’s actions tend to hew fairly closely to his overall approval rating, but in this case, voters have a positive impression of the Inflation Reduction Act even as Biden’s approval rating in the poll is 13 points underwater (42% approve / 55% disapprove). 

One clear way to bolster the bill’s popularity is to communicate to the public how they personally stand to benefit from it. As things stand, voters are more likely to believe that the Inflation Reduction Act will make things worse for them (35%) than make things better (26%), and over one-third (36%) don’t believe that it will make a difference for them either way.

The poll also troublingly finds that, in large part due to increasing partisan polarization, the minority of voters who believe that the federal government “does not need to be involved” in addressing climate change is growing.

Those who believe the country isn’t doing enough to address climate change (45%) now outnumber those who believe that the government shouldn’t be involved (36%) by nine points. By comparison, in August 2021, voters were 21 points more likely to say that the government wasn’t doing enough to address climate (52%) than to say that the government shouldn’t be involved (31%). And in December 2019, they were 38 points more likely to say that the government wasn’t doing enough to address climate change (59%) than to say that the government shouldn’t be involved (21%).

Over the same time period, the share of Americans who believe that the government is “doing enough to address climate change” has stayed steady (15% now, 14% in August 2021, and 15% in December 2019).

The NBC News article linked above identifies the primary reason that rejection of the government’s role in addressing climate change is growing: two-thirds of Republicans now say that the federal government does not need to be involved in addressing climate change, up from 40% in 2019.

The Economist + YouGov

The majority of Americans continue to attribute climate change to human activity; two in five say they’re worried about water shortages in their local area (Topline, Crosstabs)

The Economist and YouGov continue to find that a stable majority of Americans recognize human-caused climate change. Their latest poll finds that 53% of the country believes that the world’s climate is changing as a result of human activity, and this figure has hovered between 52% and 56% across several Economist/YouGov polls this summer.

The new poll also finds that droughts are a common concern in much of the country, and the public leans toward believing that climate change is causing them. Just over two in five Americans nationwide (42%) say that they are at least “somewhat” concerned about water shortages in their local area, though this percentage varies considerably by region: the majority of Americans in Western states (61%) say they’re concerned about water shortages, compared to 45% in the Northeast, 38% in the South, and 24% in the Midwest.

The poll also finds that Americans are ten points more likely to believe that recent droughts are primarily the result of climate change (44%) than to believe that they are the “kinds of events that just happen from time to time” (34%). The link between droughts and climate change is clearest to residents of the West, who feel the most impacted by water shortages: over half of Americans in the West (53%) attribute droughts to climate change, compared to 44% in the Midwest, 40% in the South, and 39% in the Northeast.

Yahoo + YouGov

Americans support the Inflation Reduction Act and its cuts to greenhouse gas emissions by wide margins (Crosstabs)

Like the NBC News poll above, Yahoo and YouGov find that Americans continue to lean toward supporting the Inflation Reduction Act when they are provided with basic information about it. 

The poll finds that Americans support the legislation by a 19-point margin (48% favor / 29% oppose) after learning about some of its major provisions, with about one-quarter (24%) unsure of where they stand on it.

The poll also finds a 19-point margin of support for the bill’s climate-related components (49% favor / 30% oppose), which it described as follows: “President Biden just signed a $369 billion climate and energy law that promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.”

This provides further evidence that advocates should feel comfortable leaning into the bill’s climate focus with general audiences. The climate action piece of the legislation continues to be popular on its own, though not as widely supported as the components of the bill that address prescription drug prices and deficit reduction.

This Yahoo/YouGov poll, for example, finds that Americans overwhelmingly support the component of the bill that would “lower the cost of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices for the first time while capping out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 a year” (64% favor / 14% oppose). 

By a wide margin (54% favor / 22% oppose), Americans also support the part of the bill that would “raise an estimated $451 billion in new revenue over the next decade primarily by requiring large corporations to pay the taxes they owe, while setting aside $300 billion for deficit reduction.”

Data for Progress

Voters support proposals to invest in public transportation and make it more equitable (Memo, Topline)

Polling regularly shows that infrastructure investment is one of the few issue priorities that can still consistently draw high levels of bipartisan support in today’s highly polarized political environment. 

In line with that trend, Data for Progress finds that there is large, cross-partisan support for proposals to improve the United States’ public transportation infrastructure and to make it more equitable:

One of the reasons that these ideas are so popular is that voters see tangible benefits to public transportation investments, both for the country and for their own community. Data for Progress finds that 81% of voters believe that the United States would benefit “some” or “a great deal” from expanded and improved public transportation systems, such as trains and buses – including 89% of Democrats, 84% of independent voters, and 70% of Republicans. 

Additionally, nearly seven in ten (69%) believe that their community would benefit from expanded and improved transportation systems like trains and buses – again including majorities of Democrats (83%), independent voters (69%), and Republicans (57%).

FiveThirtyEight

Americans are widely concerned about climate change and link it to extreme weather; most say they’ve changed their personal behaviors due to environmental concerns (Article)

There’s no brand-new polling here, but FiveThirtyEight’s polling roundup last week included a heavy focus on public opinion about climate change and is well worth reading for climate advocates who want a quick synopsis on current polling trends on the issue.

Excerpting from the article here, with emphasis added in bold: 

“A majority of Americans — 71 percent — said their local community has endured at least one of five forms of extreme weather over the last year: heat, flooding, drought, wildfires or rising sea levels, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center conducted in May. And regardless of the type experienced, a majority of those who had faced such weather said climate change played a role. This is true even among Republicans, who are generally less likely to believe climate change is happening. For Republicans who said their local community had experienced extreme heat, for example, 79 percent said climate change contributed a lot or a little, while 21 percent said climate change did not contribute at all.

Whether or not they’ve experienced it firsthand, most Americans are worried about climate change. In a Morning Consult poll from July, 73 percent of Americans said they were at least somewhat concerned about climate change, including 39 percent who said they were very concerned. However, in this case, public opinion is split along partisan lines. While 91 percent of Democrats said they were very or somewhat concerned about climate change, fewer than half — 47 percent — of Republicans said the same.

Clearly, many Americans are feeling the heat and understand its causes. But what are they willing to do about it? Well, many are taking matters into their own hands and trying to make more climate-friendly choices in their personal lives. In that Morning Consult poll, 61 percent of Americans said they had changed their behavior “some” or “a lot” because of concerns about the environment…. 

Fewer than half of all respondents said that they stay away from single-use packaging or that they buy items with limited to no packaging. But most Americans said they recycle, use refillable water bottles, restrict their use of plastics and buy items made of recyclable materials because of concerns over the environment…

And there’s substantial agreement among Americans over what the federal government can and should do to address climate change, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from earlier this month. A majority of Americans supported measures such as incentives to lower the cost of renewable energy and using government funds to promote oil and gas companies to reduce emissions. These policies are popular even among Republicans: 53 percent of Republicans supported the cost-lowering incentives and 50 percent supported funding to lower emissions from oil and gas companies.”

EDF Action (NM)

New Mexico voters widely support proposals to shift the state toward clean energy, reduce methane pollution, and protect safe drinking water (Release, Memo)

This newly released EDF Action poll in New Mexico finds that, amid a hotly contested gubernatorial race, there is broad and cross-partisan support in New Mexico for climate-friendly policies at the state level.

Ensuring safe drinking water regularly polls as the single top environmental priority among the American public. Consistent with that, EDF Action finds overwhelming support in New Mexico (89%) for a proposal to provide funding to help rural and tribal communities repair systems that ensure safe drinking water.

The poll also finds that a commanding majority (70% support / 20% oppose) approve of New Mexico’s recently adopted methane rules, described in the poll as “new requirements that the oil and gas industry use technologies to limit the amount of methane gas and other pollution released from oil and gas facilities.” These methane rules draw support from 91% of Democrats and two-thirds of independents (67%), while Republican voters are split evenly (45% support / 45% oppose).

EDF Action also finds that, by a 20-point margin (58% support / 38% oppose), New Mexicans want to see the state pass a comprehensive new climate law that “would make New Mexico a national leader in the production of clean, renewable energy and require the pollution that causes climate change be reduced by half by 2030 and be net-zero by 2050.” 

While it’s able to draw majority support, this climate package is more polarizing than the other proposals included in the poll memo. Democratic voters overwhelmingly support the comprehensive climate proposal (90% support, including 81% who support it “strongly”), and the majority of independent voters are also in favor (56% support / 36% oppose). However, just 18% of Republican voters say they support it, with 78% opposed.

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